A gas-phase combustion reaction is to be carried out in a PFR. Oxygen is always
ID: 701843 • Letter: A
Question
A gas-phase combustion reaction is to be carried out in a PFR. Oxygen is always the limiting reagent. An air plant is used to feed (mostly) pure oxygen into the PFR. Today is your first day working on this PFR and the AIR PLANT FAILED. The oxygen being fed into the reactor is now being diluted with nitrogen Please answer the following questions. You do not need to show any calculations but you must justify your answers. State any assumptions you make (a) What is the subsequent effect on effect conversion? (b) What can you (reasonably) do to mitigate these effects and what is the effect of your fix on conversion and other process outputs (temperature, pressures, etc.)? The engineers working on the air plant tell you they will need at least several days to get the air plant up and running.)Explanation / Answer
a) At present oxygen is diluted with nitrogen to mitigate the process. Here Nitrogen act as an inert which control the system. When the inert gas is added to the system : If a change in stoichiometry coefficient between product and reactant is positive then Equilibrium constant K shifts towards right and conversion is increased at constant pressure.Otherwise, the change is negative then Equilibrium constant K shifts towards left and conversion decreased at constant pressure.
b) If the reaction is exothermic then decrease in Temperature will increase and if the reaction is endothermic we have to increase the temperature to maintain the optimum conversion.When the pressure is increased and If a change in stoichiometry coefficient between product and reactant is positive then Equilibrium constant K shifts towards left.When the pressure is decreased, and the change is negative then Equilibrium constant K shifts towards right and conversion increased.
So, till the start of Air Plant depending upon the system requirements, I will consider all the thermodynamic parameters used to model the process and Effectively mitigate the process by making satisfactory changes discussed above.
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